


nice day for a white wedding

by jugheadjones



Series: love is patient, love is kind [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: it's just that it wasn't supposed to be like this, because Fred used to make him believe there was more out there in the world, and now all they have is this hospital room, and the things he can't say to him.





	nice day for a white wedding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theshininq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshininq/gifts).



 

 

 

> a/n: this work deeply borrows from the style of [ohmygodwhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy)'s jughead and archie stories, which employ the same kind of writing to a much more refined end, and which always inspire me to write more for this fandom. 

 

it’s just that it wasn't supposed to be like this, fred in a hospital bed.  
  
fred's accident prone, sure, and there's been a couple near misses - that canoe trip they took up sweetwater, for one, seventeen and too cocky for their own good - but he's always been the golden boy, the one who could crawl through shit and come out clean - fp used to resent him for it, he thinks. now he wishes it was still like that. when he holds a hand above fred’s skin he can feel the fever coming off him in waves.  

he can’t begin to imagine the pain but he remembers that motorcycle accident he was in and thinks it must be like that, maybe worse. thinks it’d help if fred would stop throwing up his meds but the meds make him sick, which means the fever doesn’t go down, means it doesn’t stop hurting. the staff at the hospital don’t do shit, just hold a bin for him to puke in, and fp wants to rage at them because don’t they know you don’t do it like that, fred needs his hair stroked when he’s sick, fred needs to be held, touched, supported, anything - he knows, he would know.  
  
it’s just that it wasn't supposed to be like this, archie cowering against him, crying in his arms in sturdy plastic waiting room chairs all day - archie needed his dad and god knew fp couldn't be that for him, but he tries, gets him food from the cafeteria, tries to tell him it's all right, that his dad’s the strongest and the bravest person he knows, that he's seen him through worse. in desperation he tries to tell him that he'll fix things and gets only a look from his own son, _yeah, fp how many times have you promised that?_  
  
he's not meant to be an adult, he's not cut out for this - comforting, fixing - fred was always the fixer, the builder. his job is to destroy, to burn it down - they put him to work splitting concrete and he thinks it fits, it's fitting, it's the only thing he's ever done - break and break and break.    
  
he has this fantasy - thinks about it more than anything else. this idea that maybe it was him instead, that he could have taken that bullet for fred’s kid, could be lying in that hospital bed right now with fred at his bedside, fred’s eyes filling with tears as he tells him how grateful he is for him, could be healing that rift between their families. could be forgiven, atonement’s a nice thought, but it never works out like that - fred took that bullet because of course it was fred, because who the hell else would come hurdling out of nowhere to protect archie, and meanwhile fp was sitting in a cell when that bullet went off, probably eating his fucking pudding, doing his hundredth pushup, no idea.  
  
helpless. he thinks he's been helpless for a long time. can't help himself much less his kids, remembers being eighteen - a budding alcoholic in training - trying to open a beer bottle and carving open his thumb. he’d passed out at the blood - yeah, that was about right, making a mess of things, just like he always did.

fred sobs in his arms one day, sobs like fp's never seen him cry, so that he has to climb into the bed and holds him - sobbing that Archie's only sixteen, _he's only sixteen he's only sixteen_ and it's not fair, sobs for what feels like hours and fp holds him the whole time with nothing to say because archie's darker now, colder in the eyes, too tired for his age, and fp doesn't know if there's an adult in the world that he'll ever trust again. just another fucking thing that doesn’t make sense, because jughead always grew up too fast, and that was his fault, yeah, but that never should have happened to fred's kid.  
  
fred's wanted to be a dad for as long as fp's known him - used to make lists in the detention room, god awful names like _lenchen_. took that family planning class while the rest of the guys were in shop.

fred was with him for jughead's birth, jellybean's birth, this very hospital. it took fred and mary awhile to get pregnant, there was at least one miscarriage in there, maybe others they haven't told him about, and he always felt guilty that he hadn't even been trying.

he thinks about all the things he wants to tell him - that he loves him, for one, and he didn't know until he was sitting here at his bedside just how fucking much. he prays every day to a god he doesn't even think he believes in - don't let it be too late. don't let me be too late. too late for what? he couldn’t tell you if you asked.

hermione shows up with the numbers fred asked her to crunch, says he can make the payments on the hospital bills if he dips into archie's college fund, the one fred's been building since before archie was conceived - slow and steady, like fred builds anything. fred says no, no one's gonna touch that, there's gonna be another way. they fight like little kids over it and finally fred turns his head to the wall and just doesn't say anything else until she leaves, cries silently the whole time, just staring at the wall.

they've both lost weight - prison food and hospital food aren't that different, in the end - but fred's getting thinner and he doesn't know what to do about it. one day he brings them take out - a chain restaurant, he avoids pops like a superstitious kid - and they eat their first real meal together with undue reverence. they don't have peanut butter milkshakes so he brings fred strawberry.  
  
fred says when they get out of there they're going to take their kids somewhere good, all four of them, to the seaside like fp's always wanted to go to.  
  
fred used to go to the sea with his parents and sisters, used to send fp postcards, mostly please please check on hermione tell me if she's seeing hiram tell her I'm coming home soon - but it was the thought that counted, all those glossy pictures of waves and sand and happy people. mr andrews doesn't love him but he gets invited along a couple times. mostly he has to turn them down, sometimes he knows he could have swung it but he says no anyways, he doesn't want to know if it's not as good as he dreams about, doesn't want to ruin it the way he makes everything dirty. fred comes home with sunburns and seashells and boardwalk prizes and a slew of family photos, and fp always looks at them all and fred says next year maybe you can come and then when they're older he says maybe we'll go down there ourselves one day.  
  
one year they do drive to a shore, win a pie eating contest, have sex in the back of their van. it's so perfect that it takes him about a week to ruin it - good things break easier, like your mom's china, your new phone. a marriage. he wishes he kept some of those postcards, but he never keeps anything worth having.

it’s just that fred used to make him believe there was more out there in the world - used to make him believe he could be someone more than the shitty kid from the shitty family - everyone's easy fuck or drug dealer or target for their shitty behaviour. for four good years he was, football hero, popular, cool, had friends to eat with at lunch, which was all he really wanted. he had his football friends and his class friends and their foursome and even the enemies he made didn’t bother him, not when he could walk down the hall with fred after laughing about them.

oh, he used to be nobody, used to sit around in september of grade nine burning his hand with his lighter to see his skin curl, could have stayed like that, forever, and had no one to eat lunch with only Fred had come like a fucking angel out of the blue - wouldn't let up until he met his friends at lunch - this is Alice and this is Hermione - and so on and so forth, yadda, yadda, because fred had so many friends it made his head spin and hey, i’m thinking of going out for JV football, do it with me so i won’t be alone.

they were in a band. a fucking band. fred wanted to sing lead vocals and fp said fine by him, he didn’t want to strut around and embarrass himself but fred was welcome to it.

there’s a box in the cupboard in his room that he only goes through when he’s drunk, puts his grimy hands on everything, the two birth certificates and the high school diploma and the snapshot of the four of them senior year: alice and hermione in the front of the frame and him and fred behind them. he has an arm around fred’s shoulders. he can’t believe it was ever that easy.  
  
fp’s always been good with teenagers. not kids, but teenagers. so he’d helped jason out. cut him a deal. let him run away to the place maybe he and fred used to think they were going to run away to: there’s always a farm outside of town. always a happy ending.

it’s just that it was supposed to end with jason and it didn’t.

it’s just that they were gonna be rock and rollers, back when they thought the world couldn’t touch them. fred had his bruce springsteen and fp had his billy idol and on sunny days he could roll out from under that van and look up into the clear blue sky and fred would be there.

it’s not supposed to be like this because fred can survive anything - fred’s a rubber ball, fred can bounce back from whatever - divorce, miscarriage, overturned canoe, his piece of shit employees stealing from him, doing odd jobs for the local gang on company time. but fred’s quiet a lot now, stares at the wall and doesn’t say anything.

why, fp rages at the universe, why would you do this to him, why, why, why

 _because_ , answers the universe, _because i don’t care_

he’d never believed in god, only that bad things were supposed to happen to bad people and good things to good ones, because fred taught him that, fred told him that was how it worked. well, turns out you knew shit all about how the world worked, hey, freddy, but goddamn,

didn’t you make it look pretty.

he empties the bank account he keeps across the canadian border. it’s all his drug money - the stuff he’s made running errands for the serpents. family protects family and they’ve taken care of him pretty good. he sees a couple more friends anyways, being careful because he’s just out of jail and all, but he doesn’t get caught, because that’s how the world works, once in awhile. do the right thing and it’ll treat you right, maybe just this one time.

for awhile after he broke fred’s heart he and hermione used to fuck - they were strictly friends with benefits in high school and stayed that way, but he used to go to her because it was as close as he could get to being with fred, the way he used to be. he thinks hermione was using him for the same reason, but it would be pretty hypocritical if he decided to mind.

that’s why he knows what she’s going to do when he sees her fingering her expensive looking earrings about a week after the college fund argument, knows she’s going to pawn them and head downstairs to see if she can pay off fred’s account, thinks she’ll be pretty surprised when she gets there and it's already done.

sometimes at night he holds fred’s wrist, feels the fever burning in it, the bones that stick out too much, the pulse that doesn’t run fast enough, and he thinks maybe next year you can come down to the sea with me, and jughead, and archie, maybe we’ll go down by ourselves one day.

and if they don’t have peanut butter ice cream, he thinks, i’ll get you strawberry.

**Author's Note:**

> comments make my day!! (and have me writing lots more)


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